The first of what will be a run of pre-Justice League trailers is Fox's The Greatest Showman. The film was a huge part of Fox's Cinemacon presentation last March, and I was rather wowed by the film's first theatrical trailer. At the time, I figured that it was Fox's big year-end Oscar offering, but (quality notwithstanding), that now appears to be Steven Spielberg's The Post.
Nonetheless, the Hugh Jackman/Michelle Williams/Zac Efron/Zendaya/Rebecca Ferguson musical about P.T. Barnum and the origins of the modern circus is aiming to be a big "not Star Wars" contender alongside Jumanji and Pitch Perfect 3 over the long holiday season. Once again, this looks like quite a bit of fun.
The most noteworthy (no pun intended) thing about this trailer is that it makes no effort to hide the fact that it is a musical. The poster and the trailer both brag about featuring "the award-winning lyricist from La La Land," and there are more than a few moments when you clearly see Hugh Jackman and others singing on camera.
This isn't Sweeney Todd where Paramount's marketing didn't emphasize its musical roots to the point where moviegoers demanded a refund after Johnny Depp started singing. This is closer to Mamma Mia! or Les Miserables which proudly proclaimed their musical intentions, although in those cases they at least had the backing of really popular source material (Sweeney Todd is justifiably huge among theater nerds, but I would argue its pop culture imprint is smaller than Les Miz).
The La La Land connection is obvious since that Damien Chazelle-directed musical was the first outwardly successful original live-action musical since High School Musical 3 (or if you note that it's a sequel, then Moulin Rouge). The musical is a safer genre than folks tend to admit, but most of the biggies are adaptations of popular stage plays (or Walt Disney animated features). Fox and friends are clearly hoping that La La Land's jaw-dropping success ($414 million worldwide) has wet the appetite for more original musicals.
And this Greatest Showman preview comes on the heels of the superb $28 million debut weekend of Murder on the Orient Express, which operated as a proof-of-concept hit for Fox's "big movies for grown-ups" strategy. Said slate has yielded hits (Logan, Kingsman: The Golden Circle) and flops (The Mountain Between Us, Alien: Covenant, Snatched, etc.), but the Branagh release is noteworthy in that it's Fox's first adult-skewing hit that isn't based on a comic book. Here's hoping that The Greatest Showman can carry them across the finish line when it opens on Dec. 20.
